From owner-freebsd-geom@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Apr 14 12:18:56 2007 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-geom@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-geom@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 57B7616A408; Sat, 14 Apr 2007 12:18:56 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from ed@hoeg.nl) Received: from palm.hoeg.nl (mx0.hoeg.nl [83.98.131.211]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2075313C44B; Sat, 14 Apr 2007 12:18:55 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from ed@hoeg.nl) Received: by palm.hoeg.nl (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 7407F1CC42; Sat, 14 Apr 2007 13:59:59 +0200 (CEST) Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 13:59:59 +0200 From: Ed Schouten To: FreeBSD GEOM Message-ID: <20070414115959.GN81821@hoeg.nl> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="nVYOjVWOcH+Ezkzp" Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.15 (2007-04-06) Cc: Rink Springer , Laurens Timmermans Subject: New GEOM module: geom_xboxhd X-BeenThere: freebsd-geom@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: GEOM-specific discussions and implementations List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 12:18:56 -0000 --nVYOjVWOcH+Ezkzp Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Hello, One of the problems of the current FreeBSD/xbox port is that it's not possible to install FreeBSD, while leaving the existing software alone. The Microsoft Xbox uses a custom disk layout which doesn't have a partition table format which specifies the geometries. All partitions are hardcoded. The last partition on the Xbox always has a variable size, because not all harddisks have the same size. The partition will never be bigger than 4895MB, so on Xboxes with a bigger harddisk, the Xbox software won't touch everything after 7645MB, which gives us space to install FreeBSD ;-) Linux has an evil hack to work around this; they have modified the x86 partition table code to start at 7645MB and create some device nodes (hda51 to hda55) which represent the partitions from the Xbox itself. I just wrote a GEOM module that just generates ad0s1 to ad0s5 and when the disk is big enough an ad0s6. My Xbox isn't capable anymore to deal with original Xbox harddisks anymore, so I tested it on my desktop with a snapshot of an Xbox harddisk from a friend of mine (thanks Laurens!). I've placed the code in a Git repository, which can be viewed online: http://g-rave.nl/gitweb?p=3Dgeom_xboxhd;a=3Dtree Yours, --=20 Ed Schouten WWW: http://g-rave.nl/ --nVYOjVWOcH+Ezkzp Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (FreeBSD) iD8DBQFGIMI/52SDGA2eCwURAjceAJ9wggcqR6MTjHIjlcq/N8dWX8DNIwCZAY9q C3UOwH3VKHADzoJDnn4cMro= =q5OB -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --nVYOjVWOcH+Ezkzp--